Bienvenido Lumbera

Bienvenido Lumbera is a Filipino poet, critic and dramatist. He is a National Artist of the Philippines and a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communications. He won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Awards from the National Book Foundation, and the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards.

Lumbera was born in Lipa on April 11, 1932. He was barely a year old when his father, Christian Lumbera (a Shooting Guard with a local basketball team), fell from a fruit tree, broke his back, and died. Carmen Lumbera, his mother, suffered from cancer and died a few years later. By the age of five he was an orphan. He and his older sister were cared for by their paternal grandmother, Eusebia Teru.

When the war ended, Lumbera and his grandmother returned to their home in Lipa. Eusebia, however, soon succumbed to old age and he was once again orphaned. For his new guardians, he was asked to choose between his maiden aunts with whom his sister had stayed or Enrique and Amanda Lumbera, his godparents. The latter had no children of their own and Bienvenido, who was barely fourteen at the time, says he chose them mainly because "they could send me to school."

Lumbera received his Litt.B. and M.A. degrees from the University of Santo Tomas in 1950, and then his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1968.

Lumbera taught Literature, Philippine Studies and Creative Writing at the Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, the University of the Philippines Diliman, and the University of Santo Tomas. He was also appointed visiting professor of Philippine Studies at Osaka University of Foreign Studies in Japan from 1985 to 1988 and the very first Asian scholar-in-residence at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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